THE TEN STEPS TO A DECENT WEB PRESENCE

We’ve beend using Trailpay on a few sites now for over a year and it’s a very impressive. From the outset we confess niether of our site are the type of site that will take full advantage of what Trial pay has to offer. They are low traffic sites in unique markets.

One site is an auction and we charge $2.00 to validate the membership of each person who wants to sell on this site. We give the option of paypal, card trasaction via RBS and Trialpay. The info below will tell you how Trialpay works but of three we are very keen to get people to use Trailpay to pay for their validation, why? well profit.

For both paypal and RBS we are charged around 5% but if the member chooses Trialpay not only do they get their process free and the discount or offer they choose from Trialpay but also we get commision. That commision ranges from $5.00 to $25.00. So you see it’s, as they say, a nice little earner and helps maintain the site. Here’s a link to Trailpay so you can see for youself what they offer -

TrialPay works with thousands of software, social games and digital goods providers and has served 60 million users across 100 countries. TrialPay invented this ad-funded payment model back in 2006, giving rise to the next wave of online payments and advertising.

The Trialpay Story.

TrialPay was born out of the idea that online stores should be able to do everything done in retail stores—only better.

Lower overhead costs, higher profit margins, promotional messaging, renewal revenue and sophisticated retention techniques were just the beginning of the “virtual” advantage. Building on these advantages, TrialPay’s founders recognized the potential of advertising throughout the online consumer transaction process.

TrialPay began with the Get It Free model, giving shoppers thousands of ways to get their purchases for free by completing an offer from one of their favorite brands. After boosting sales for thousands of online merchants, TrialPay’s founders realized that by using the efficiencies of the Web, they could pair online shoppers with ideal offers at every stage of the purchase process—revolutionizing the concept of transactional advertising.

Using TrialPay, any company selling online (from the Fortune 500 to one-man operations) can significantly increase sales from its current traffic by providing compelling deals to shoppers at ideal intervals. Shoppers get a free product with every purchase, and blue-chip advertisers acquire high-quality customers on a pay-for-performance basis—a model all too rare these days.

The potential demonstrated in the Get It Free model led Atomico, Battery Ventures, Index Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Bob Pittman and several other individual investors to invest in TrialPay in 2006. Three years, 10,000 merchants, 80+ employees and 60 million users later, TrialPay is recognized as the inventor of the “Get It Free” payment method and an innovator in the transactional advertising space.

To see how easy Trialpay is to setup watch this video

Page Rank Checker is a free tool to check Google™ page ranking of any web site pages easily and to display your site’s PageRank™ value on your web pages

Will You Site Focus On One topic?

What is a Membership Web Site?

So what do we mean by identity and control ?

Yes the standard things like domains, your rights to them (or not) fall under identity but as general terms get eaten up as domain names and companies find it harder to register a suitable domain name that will identify them, we’ll also be looking away the standard terms as domain names.

We’ll also be outlining the dangers of allowing yourself to be shepherded by a design company and corralled into their grasp with them having control and you finding it difficult to change suppliers should you feel the need. We feel it’s important for content owners to be in control both over content and supply of that content to the Internet. The very last thing site owners need is to be stuck with a site either up and out of date or slow or a site down and no way to swiftly deal with the problem.

No one knows you business better then you and your staff and so thinking up a good domain name or two should be in your hands, don’t be tempted to leave this to a design company solely. Although giving a list of words and phases is acceptable, the final decision should be left to you the site owner. Don’t be tempted to use less popular domain extensions either and never be convinced to use domain extensions that you are not entitled to use. Here are a few of the extensions available along with their intended use;

• .com represents the word “commercial,” and is the most widely used extension in the world. Most businesses prefer a .com domain name because it is a highly recognized symbol for having a business presence on the Internet.
• .net represents the word “network,” and is most commonly used by Internet service providers, Web-hosting companies or other businesses that are directly involved in the infrastructure of the Internet. Additionally, some businesses choose domain names with a .net extension for their intranet Websites.
• .org represents the word “organization,” and is primarily used by non-profits groups or trade associations.
• .biz is used for small business Web sites, .com is preferred because people expect that.
• .info is for credible resource Web sites and signifies a “resource” web site. It’s the most popular extension beyond .com, .net and .org.
• .mobi (short for “mobile”) is reserved for Web sites built for easy viewing on mobile devices.
• .us is for American Web sites and is the newest extension. It has the largest amount of available names in inventory.
• .cc was originally the country code for Coco’s Keeling Islands. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .bz was originally designated as the country code for Belize, but is now commonly used by small business who can’t get the name they want using the .biz extension. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .tv is for rich content/multi-media Web sites, commonly used within the entertainment or media industry.
• .vg is the country code for the British Virgin Islands. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .ws was originally designated as the country code for Western Samoa, but is now commonly used as an acronym for “Web sites.” It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .name is the only domain extension specifically designed for personal use. It is commonly used for easy to remember e-mail addresses and personal web sites that display photos or personal information about an individual.
• .co.ukis the country codefor United Kingdom. The .co portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for commercial purposes (similar to a standard .com extension). It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country. If you company trade only in the uk you should always try to use this as people looking for uk companies often see it as a comfort sign.
  
• .org.uk is the country code for United Kingdom. The .org portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for an organization. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .me.uk is the country code for United Kingdom. The .me portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for an individual. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .de is the country code for Germany. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country. If you are not a resident and citizen of Germany, the Administrative Contact for this domain name registration will automatically be assigned Network Solutions’ German proxy contact information.
• .euis the country code for the European Union. Registration of .eu domain names requires registrants to meet one of the three eligibility requirements: have a registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the European Community; have an organization established within the European Community without prejudice to the application of national law; or be a natural person resident within the European Community. Alternatively, you can secure the use of a .eu domain name by using Network Solutions .EU Registration Service. Network Solutions Europe, LLC is the registrar for all .eu domain names. Click here for more information.
• .be is the country code for Belgium. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .cnis the country code for China. It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .com.cnis the country code for China. The .com portion of the extension indicates the domain is for commercial purposes (similar to a standard .com extension). It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .net.cnis the country code for China. The .net portion of the extension represents the word “network”, and is generally used by internet infrastructure providers. It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .org.cnis the country code for China. The .org portion of the extension indicates the domain is for an organization. It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .cn Regional names.There are 34 regional .cn extensions available, for example, .bj.cn. The .bj portion of the extension represents Beijing and the .cn represents China. These extensions may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .twis the country code for Taiwan. It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .com.twis the country code for Taiwan. The .com portion of the extension indicates the domain is for commercial purposes (similar to a standard .com extension). It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .org.twis the country code for Taiwan. The .org portion of the extension indicates the domain is for an organization. It may be registered by businesses, organizations and sole proprietorships from any country.
• .at is the country code for Austria. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .com.mx is the country code for Mexico. The .com portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for commercial purposes (similar to a standard .com extension). It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .co.nz is the country code for New Zealand. The .co portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for commercial purposes (similar to a standard .com extension). It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .net.nzis the country code for New Zealand. The .net portion of the extension represents the word “network”, and is generally used by internet infrastructure providers. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .org.nz is the country code for New Zealand. The .org portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for an organization. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .gs is the country code for the South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .tcis the country code for the Turks & Caicos Islands. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .ms is the country code for Montserrat. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.
• .fm is the country code for Federated States of Micronesia, but is commonly used for FM radio.
• .am is the country code for Armenia, but commonly used for AM radio.
• .la is the country extension for Laos, but also used for Los Angeles, Louisiana or Latin America.
• .us.com is an alternate domain for the United States
• .uk.com is an alternate domain for the United Kingdom
• .eu.com is an alternate domain for the European Union
• .de.com is an alternate domain for Germany

Your aims might fall into more then one of those domain extensions criteria so if you can afford it, and you feel it important to you, then register all types that might apply. But don’t be fooled into having to do that by a 3rd party, in the end your site will stand or fall by it’s content and your ability to drive people to see it. In time someone might set up a similar site with a similar name if you are successful and if you are then you will then have the power to deal with those people. For most people it’s a problem they won’t have but the are time when registering versions of names is important but we say don’t risk that success by funding issues you don’t have to right now, often the money is better spent elsewhere.

As this is just an introduction to the category we’ll not cover everything but hope we gave you enough to come back for further detail later. In the next section we will discuss control, perhaps the most important aspect of your plan if you want a smooth ride to that successful web presence.

Working on it – maybe

The very first thing a new web site owner need to do is to understand why they want a web site presence at all. The internet is a handy place to be but not must place some people would have you beleive. Knowing why is is the first step to knowing what and that leads to how, when and how much. Let’s take those in turn and expand on why it’s so critical to make this your first step.

WHY ? – it could just be tha you want to tell people about your pet cat. In that case your target audience will be those who love cats (ed. Rule me out of that one).  People who like cats and use the internet might search on cat topics. So what do learn from that ?

1. You should look for buying a domain name with the term “cat” or more likely “cats” or “kittens” perhaps. Your alternatives, especilly if your site is going to be fun or zanny is using some sort of cat activity – ScratchPost.com ? FleeRiddenRats.com ? (ed. sorry I really don’t like cats).

2.  The dot com also would depend on the visitors you want to attract. If you only want to focus on UK then a co.uk domain is best.

3. As your target audience if in the UK you don’t want to base your site the other end of the world so look for a UK host.

4. Your site will be mostly images and comment and so the simplest of web space is all you need but I would stay away from free web space. In general it now very hard to drive traffic to free web space simply because the structure of the systems they sit on and the fact that they tend to house a lot of spam or purely promotional rubbish. Almost always when a person signs up to a free web account the hit restrictions. Web space need not cost a lot so why go for the cheapest option. If you site is not worth £20.00 a year to setup properly then why bother. Look professional even if your site is just an hobby you need it to reflect your interest in it and the people who come to view it. 

5. A simple site could be better termed as a brouchur site and if you have ever used Ms Word or Ms Powerpoint you are already more then capable of producing this type of web site. No need then for external costs.

But what if you have grander ideas ?

You want to be able to cominicate with people and discuss cats on your web site. Perhaps your aim is to build a community of cat lovers and use that community to earn money.

6. Almost is all cases you’ll need a slightly more advanced hosting and this more or less rules out free hosting. But the more importent issue here is the application you use. That could be free using open source products but if needs to be able to do what you want doing. So right there you why leads on to a big how.

7.The are a number of really good produces available to build forums, almost all need a database to store the data. This need not extend your budget behond that stated £20.00 either so no extra cost. But you will have to try each one as they all have their issues and differing levels of difficulty to design, build and maintain.

But dealing with database driven sites does carry a rather steep learning carve if your eyes have already glazed over at this point. Many people do manage to acomplish what they want and you should not be dettered and we hope to cover these issue on this site.

What we’ve not covered here is perhaps 95% of all other options and type of web sites anyone might want to setup, not least ecommerce sites. The reason being that dealing with money needs more time and far more business expertise from the outset. We will cover  taking payments online, online stores and even auction but not today. A breaf outline of what we’ve covered here and what help it might be to the novice follows;

1. Make sure you know and understand what you want from your website.

2. Host and Build for your audience.

3. Find the right tools for the job and make sure you can work with those tools.

4. At all times have a professional aproach, you only get out what you are prepared to put in.

The is the introduction to a group of categories about how to plan, design, impliment and maintain a successfull web presence. The first term we need to discuss is the one “successfull”. If you started you search on the web today with these words “money making” or something similer then you may be disapointed with this section of the site. The success we are going to talk about is in terms of quality, performance and yes quality but in terms of traffic not bags of easy money sorry.

The next thing we need to cover is the structure of the category. It’s not really a step by step plan, this is simply because a lot of aspects of web site work overlap so keep this in mind. Also each category is ongoing so don’t think because you’ve already planned your site you won’t find anything useful for you in that category. For example we may cover a new software aplication or even improve on suggestions we have made in the past.

Another key point is the are no experts here. That may sound a strange thing to say if you are looking for people to give you pricise information backed up by experiance. Well our experiance is a great many of the people on the internet claiming to be “ex[erts” have little or no experiance in key areas and so although the can code PHP or design fantastic flash buttons that all they have done. We feel the web site design and delivery covers so many aspects that very few people can claim to be an expert. We’ll broaden this idea later in the section but for now we can tell you that all the information you see here is based on true world experance gained in real life exposure to business issues. A simple way of saying it worked for us and so might work for you but you’ll have to apply your own experiance and knowladge too. Isn’t that true about most things though ?